121 Comments on “Happy New Years Eve”

I mostly, sort of tried to take care of myself, but time and gravity take their toll. If I had known everything would fail anyway, I’d have revved the engine a lot harder than I did when I was a younger guy. Happy New Year.

It gets harder and harder to stay healthy and fit, but we’re giving it the old college try. The motivation just isn’t what it used to be, for one thing. Everything tastes great, too. Including craft beer, good whiskey and Christmas cookies. 🙂

Did you know that if you name a form submission button “submit,” you won’t be able to submit that form with a Javascript call to the submit() function? I didn’t. But now I do. An ancient DOM quirk bit me. https://t.co/JGFGhdWjSY

When they buy the steaks, I’m going to be a very happy camper. We had steak, homemade sweet potato fries and garlic bread, and a great bottle of wine. George had chicken and white rice, his new diet for the next week or so. I tried it — it’s pretty good! 🙂

.@Medium It's difficult to find words to express how disappointing and disgusting it was to open my email this morning and find far right Pizzagate-promoting rape apologist Mike Cernovich as your top featured writer. What a disgrace.

It’s so cute when the Old Gray Lady (no, not Shrillary — the other failure) trots out a RINO-assdouche to lecture people about how, despite his accomplishments, “he’s just not our sort, Buffy.” To which I can only reply by pointing to Pakimog’s “Schadenboner” cartoon, and laughing like a diabolical cartoon villain. MUHAHAHAH, and whatnot.

Many conservatives have decided that the best way to deal with Trump’s personality is to pretend it doesn’t matter. Credit Zach Gibson for The New York Times
Tax cuts. Deregulation. More for the military; less for the United Nations. The Islamic State crushed in its heartland. Assad hit with cruise missiles. Troops to Afghanistan. Arms for Ukraine. A tougher approach to North Korea. Jerusalem recognized as Israel’s capital. The Iran deal decertified. Title IX kangaroo courts on campus condemned. Yes to Keystone. No to Paris. Wall Street roaring and consumer confidence high.

And, of course, Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court. What, for a conservative, is there to dislike about this policy record as the Trump administration rounds out its first year in office?

That’s the question I keep hearing from old friends on the right who voted with misgiving for Donald Trump last year and now find reasons to like him. I admit it gives me pause. I agree with every one of the policy decisions mentioned above. But I still wish Hillary Clinton were president.

How does that make sense? Can I still call myself conservative?

The answer depends on your definition. Here’s one I’ve always liked: “The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society,” said the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan. To which he added: “The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself.”

Conservatives used to believe in their truth. Want to “solve” poverty? All the welfare dollars in the world won’t help if two-parent families aren’t intact. Want to foster democracy abroad? It’s going to be rough going if too many voters reject the foundational concept of minority rights.

And want to preserve your own republican institutions? Then pay attention to the character of your leaders, the culture of governance and the political health of the public. It matters a lot more than lowering the top marginal income tax rate by a couple of percentage points.

This is the fatal mistake of conservatives who’ve decided the best way to deal with Trump’s personality — the lying, narcissism, bullying, bigotry, crassness, name calling, ignorance, paranoia, incompetence and pettiness — is to pretend it doesn’t matter. “Character Doesn’t Count” has become a de facto G.O.P. motto. “Virtue Doesn’t Matter” might be another.

But character does count, and virtue does matter, and Trump’s shortcomings prove it daily.

Maybe you think the Russia investigation is much ado about nothing. Yet Trump brought it on himself every step of the way, from firing James Comey after the former F.B.I. director wouldn’t swear fealty, to (potentially) admitting to obstruction of justice with that tweet about Mike Flynn’s firing. Or maybe you regret the failure to repeal Obamacare. But that had something to do with the grotesque insults Trump lobbed at John McCain, the man whose “nay” vote sank repeal.

Look at every other administration embarrassment (Scaramucci) or failure (the wall, and Mexico paying for it) or disgrace (the Charlottesville equivocation). Responsibility invariably lies with the president’s intemperance and dishonesty. That puts Republican control of Congress in play. It also risks permanently alienating a millennial generation for which the G.O.P. will forever be the party of the child-molesting sore loser and the president who endorsed him.

Now look at the culture of governance. Trump demands testimonials from his cabinet, servility from Republican politicians and worship from conservative media. To serve in this White House isn’t to be elevated to public service. It’s to be debased into toadyism, which probably explains the record-setting staff turnover of 34 percent, according to an analysis from the Brookings Institution.

In place of presidential addresses, stump speeches or town halls, we have Trump’s demagogic mass rallies. In place of the usual jousting between the administration and the press, we have a president who fantasizes on Twitter about physically assaulting CNN. In place of a president who defends the honor and integrity of his own officers and agencies, we have one who humiliates his attorney general, denigrates the F.B.I. and compares our intelligence agencies to the Gestapo.

Trump is normalizing all this; he is, to borrow another Moynihan phrase, “defining deviancy down.” A president who supposedly wants to put a wall between the U.S. and Latin America has imported a style of politics reminiscent of the cults of Juan Perón and Hugo Chávez.

Conservatives may suppose that they can pocket policy gains from a Trump administration while the stain of his person will eventually wash away. But as a (pro-Trump) friend wrote me the other day, “presidents empower cultures.” Trump is empowering a conservative political culture that celebrates everything that patriotic Americans should fear: the cult of strength, open disdain for truthfulness, violent contempt for the Fourth Estate, hostility toward high culture and other types of “elitism,” a penchant for conspiracy theories and, most dangerously, white-identity politics.

This won’t end with Trump. It may have only begun with him. And Trump’s supporters may wind up proving both sides of Moynihan’s contention: not just that culture is what matters most, but that politics can still change it — in this case, much for the worse.

It’s quite something. There’s still a whole herd of these NY-based pseudo-conservatives, ranting about being Never Trumpers to the end. They’re all confused little society mutts. I sic my pet coyote on them.

In 2017 we saw the absolute worst people in America rise to positions of power and influence and become wealthy. The absolute worst. People like Steve Bannon, Jim Hoft, Mike Cernovich, and many more vile hate-mongers. Let’s hope this awful trend reverses in 2018.

I know! It never gets old, watching the TV-maroons slowly absorb the reality of the moment. Our local news people are very lefty, and were openly dismissive of Trump’s chances, laffing and making rude comments right up until the point where the exit-polls turned truthy. It was so great, clicking around that evening. My wife and I were beside ourselves. 😆

He used to do sports on ESPN, and then had some kind of mental breakdown that was celebrated by the Left. He’s best known for being “Bathtub Boy,” during his first stint at the then-popular sports cable network.

@ASlavitt @nytimes After all the heated criticism of that last interview with Trump, it’s as if they’re saying, “Yo… twitter.com/i/web/status/9…
33 minutes ago
@ASlavitt @nytimes Servile New York Times is the worst New York Times.
36 minutes ago

This could be fun. Charles @Green_Footballs Johnson is about to have a Mel Gibson moment. It's still early on the west coast, but as of midnight, pot will be legal in California. Toke it up, bro.https://t.co/6lpYbknQJK

I know it’s not right to say this, but if only we could engineer a SWAT-response on Chunky’s bunker after/during one of these Trumpy-tantrums. I don’t want him to get shot, but maybe bean-bagged in the balls? 😆

Charles and a few million others. Think of the crapstorm if Trump started blocking, then un-blocking individual accounts. He could do it repeatedly for the lulz, and Twitter wouldn’t dare cancel his account. 😀

Same thing happened here a few years ago. Contractor showed up on the jobsite, found the wiring had been yanked, so they rewired. It happened again, so they worked double time over the weekend, powered up the building.
Monday morning they found a crispy critter.

I mean, I can understand stripping the copper from an abandoned house. It makes sense. If I was a drug-craving street weasel, I’d be all over it. But an electrical substation, with warning signs all over the joint, you have to cut through two fences to enter? Dudes! 😆

286. ENTERTAINMENT LAWYER 12/28 **#3**
Earlier this year, this one named permanent A list icon publicly offered to house displaced people. She made a very big deal about it. Apparently an organization got in touch with her people and said they had about a dozen families that could use help. The icon went radio silent on them and never helped anyone. Cher https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cher-offers-dreamers-sanctuary/

289. ENTERTAINMENT LAWYER 12/28 **#6**
This foreign born one named permanent A list singer doesn’t seem at all worried about all those vacations with the family on the coast of France. You know, the ones where he would hit on the friends of his kids. Lots of touching and offering to rub lotion, etc. He was a known lecher/groper, but probably will get away with it because that country doesn’t seem to be doing anything similar to this country about the problem. At some point they will and he will probably not feel so smug. Bono https://www.seesainttropez.com/famous/bono-u2-frontman-683443

I expect to live long enough to see these robots running people down and making them stop whatever activity the robots are programmed to control, in my lifetime. In fact, I will enjoy watching this show, on “Robot Cops.” 🙂

I think it will take another hundred years or so for the robots to take over completely, by which time I will be long gone. Hey, Wayfuture Robots! Fuck you!

I believe I mentioned last night that the new season of “Black Mirror” was out on Netflix. I downloaded it last night, and watched the first episode tonight with the fam. It’s a Star Trek joint, and I loved it. YMMV.

This twit-spasm from Teleskiguy that Chunky retweeted is very illustrative of the breed. 😆

In Colorado today, a white dude shot seven people, including five cops, one of whom died – a white dude shot over 600 people in Vegas in October, 58 deaths – a white dude shot 46 people in a church in Texas last month, 26 deaths – and nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care.

Youth of America, you better get ready for war, because president* Fuckface Von Clownstick is more likely than not to start WWIII. And your kids? They better be ready for WWIV, the great war over the last fresh water on Earth. https://t.co/N78W9cWGmg

If there was any real journalism left in the MSM besides Fox (sometimes), this story would be one of the biggest scandals of the year. I mean, there’s a lot of competition for that title, but this would be a strong contender. The Left is still crowing about Trump being a gropy rapist, with zero evidence.